Robert K. Tsutakawa

Overview

Robert K. Tsutakawa is a statistician at the University of Missouri, Columbia. He works on Bayesian and empirical Bayes methods for analyzing sparse count data, particularly disease-specific mortality rates in small geographic units. His work bridges classical Poisson regression with hierarchical random-effects modeling.

Key Contributions

• Tsutakawa, Shoop, and Marienfeld (1985): "Empirical Bayes Estimation of Cancer Mortality Rates." Statistics in Medicine 4: 201–212. Earlier single-stratum version of the gamma-Poisson geographic mortality model.
• Tsutakawa (1988): "Mixed Model for Analyzing Geographic Variability in Mortality Rates." Journal of the American Statistical Association 83(401): 37–46. Extended the empirical Bayes gamma-Poisson model to cross-classified mortality data (demographic × geographic), adding a common random geographic effect $z_i$ across strata and cell-level extra-Poisson variation $p_{ij}$; demonstrated on lung cancer in 115 Missouri counties, 1972–1981. See Small-Area Mortality Estimation.

Related

• Small-Area Mortality Estimation
• Period Mortality
• Lee-Carter Model